I'm a Main Street business evangelist and marketing veteran with over 25 years in the trenches, and I write about small business financing as an employee at OnDeck and also at Forbes. I try to make the maze of small business finance accessible by weaving personal experiences and other anecdotes into a regular discussion around one of the biggest challenges facing small business today. The opinions expressed are my own and not those of OnDeck.

It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know?

We’ve all heard that it’s often not what you know but who you know. Online, that might be truer than you think.

If you don’t know what Klout is, you’re already behind the 8-ball. If you have a Twitter account, you have a Klout score whether or not you’re aware of it. Klout is the brainchild of a San Franciso-based startup that aggregates your following, the number of times you are re-Tweeted or otherwise mentioned, and the number of times you post and who reads them (to mention a couple of data points in the algorithm) to come up with a Klout score—basically it identifies how influential you are online. For example, Justin Bieber has a score of 100 while the Aflac Duck scores almost 50. My personal score is closer to the duck than the pop star.

Does your Klout score really matter?

Aside from being interesting and entertaining, the jury is still out. That being said, having a low Klout score certainly doesn’t help you.

According to WIRED, “Last spring Sam Fiorella was recruited for a VP position at a large Toronto marketing agency. With 15 years of experience consulting for major brands like AOL, Ford, and Kraft, Fiorella felt confident in his qualifications,” writes Seth Stevenson. “But midway through the interview, he was caught off guard when his interviewer asked him for his Klout score. Fiorella hesitated awkwardly before confessing that he had no idea what a Klout score was.”

He continued, “The interviewer pulled up the web page for Klout.com—a service that purports to measure users’ online influence on a scale from 1 to 100—and angled the monitor so that Fiorella could see the humbling result for himself: His score was 34. “He cut the interview short pretty soon after that,” Fiorella says. Later he learned that he’d been eliminated as a candidate specifically because his Klout score was too low. ‘They hired a guy whose score was 67.’”

Fortunately a score of 47 hasn’t cost the Aflac Duck his job yet, but then again he’s not trying to work for an ad agency in Toronto.

Like many online, I’m not convinced that aggregate scores like this really give us more than a single data point. For example, my score isn’t anywhere near what Justin’s is, but it’s higher than some of the industry analysts in my space (who happen to have a real clout score much higher than mine).

Because I’m active on social media professionally I have an interest in what my Klout score is—whether or not it is an actual representation of my real clout in the marketplace. Followers, re-tweets and number of times someone posts are not a really good measure of the value you provide anyway…are they? I know plenty of people who don’t say much, but when they do it’s relevant and meaningful. Those are the folks with real Klout…er…clout.

That being said, I’m convinced that things like Klout scores are here to stay. With only a three-year track record and the need for organizations in general and marketing organizations particularly to measure the value of their online efforts to educate and build relationships with people interested in their products, it’s easy to see why Klout is doing so well. The trick will be to determine how much of their algorithm panders to “vanity” type metrics and how much demonstrates real clout in the market place.

When I’m looking for someone for a place on my project team, I look for someone with the core experience I need and don’t rely on some kind of vanity metric manufactured to arbitrarily “rank” them. However, I do think something like a Klout score could serve as a data point.

“Partly intrigued,” writes Stevenson, ” partly scared, Fiorella spent the next six months working feverishly to boost his Klout score, eventually hitting 72. As his score rose, so did the number of job offers and speaking invitations he received. ‘Fifteen years of accomplishments weren’t as important as that score,’ he says.”

With that in mind, I don’t plan on ignoring my Klout score over the next twelve months—will you? By the way, feel free to login to Klout and toss me a K+, it will likely help my score.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.